A growing number of persons in this country and others are engaged in outdoor recreational pursuits. These includes hikers, runners, cyclists, skiers, climber, fishermen, hunters and the like. One characteristic common to many of the participants of these various activities is the need to carry equipment or supplies for use during the activity. This equipment or supplies may includes a squeeze bottle for water or other fluid for the participant, a pouch for carrying sunglasses or other types of eyeglasses, a pouch for a camera or lens, a pouch for carrying ammunition, a pouch for carrying fishing supplies and bait and the like. With each of these pieces of equipment or supplies, it is desirable to have them readily accessible to the participant.
Pockets defined in clothing worn by the participant have long served this need. However, as clothing for each of these outdoor activities has become more specialized, pockets have been eliminated in many instances. Typically, the participant in one of these outdoor activities carries a backpack with shoulder straps, a fannypack, a lumbar pack, or some other type of equipment bag. Unfortunately, by carrying equipment and supplies within such packs and bags, the participant must usually take the bag or pack off and unzip a pocket to gain access to the equipment. This is undesirable since the participant may desire quick and ready access to the equipment such as a waterbottle for use during the activity.
For this reason, specialized and dedicated pockets for equipment such as waterbottles have been designed for the external surfaces of backpacks, fannypacks, lumbar packs, and waistbelts. Alternatively, releasable pile and loop connectors have been utilized on waistbelts with the matching portion of the releasable connector on the piece of equipment such as a waterbottle. However, excess weight or other forces may cause the piece of equipment to become unintentionally detached from the waistbelt. Unfortunately, none of the approaches described above offer the flexibility to securely store any of several different components of equipment on a given location of an exterior surface of a belt, backpack or lumbar pack.
A somewhat related problem exists in the interior of backpacks, travel bags and luggage. Within such bags, it is often desirable to attach smaller containers or interior wails to the interior surfaces of the bag. Such arrangements are convenient to organize the interior of a bag and/or to segregate components of equipment therewithin as necessary. The closest attempt to solve this problem known to the applicant is done on a smaller scale in camera bags. Such camera bags may cover all of the interior surfaces of the bag with one of the mating surfaces of a releasable pile and loop connector. Vertically-oriented interior walls are then provided with mating surfaces for the releasable pile and loop connector so that they may be placed in any position as desired within the bag to create separate compartments. Unfortunately, in a larger-scale bag such a system will require a large mount of the releasable connector material. More importantly, it is undesirable to have large exposed portions of the releasable connector material tier snagging and interfering with clothing and equipment stored within the bags. Most importantly, the interior walls in camera bags provide only cushioning and compartmentalization.